Friday, May 27, 2011

Last weekend was the annual horse roundup conducted by our uphill neighbors - it's been kind of a busy week for me at work otherwise these would be more timely. Yeah, excuses excuses. Said uphill neighbor, who blogs at Musings of a slowly rotting mind, has posted about this fun event in the past, and this year showed us a rather, er, intimate moment involving a mare's pregnancy check.

It's always fun, with good food and company and lots of activity. Here are a couple of shots I took that day. This first one I swear Lepa (the palomino) is giving me/us the Stink Eye.

The second shot shows some interesting tools, another one of my favorite subjects.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

I spent the weekend in the Bay Area visiting my folks, enjoyable time had by all of course. I came home with a truck full of goodies, most notable among those were some of Mom's amazing chocolate chip cookies. Dino, whose alternate nickname is Cookie Monster, was pleased.

I made a road side stop on my approach to the foothill area for this vista.

We've had rain. In fact, it hasn't been necessary for quite a few days now to do any handwatering of my precious little vegetable garden. In spite of all of that, and some rather chilly days as well, I was happy with their growth rate as I did my morning inspection today. Maybe we'll even have some decent tomatoes this year.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Every work day, I drive up a steep grade to get to the paved road that takes me into town. This year, the wildflowers are especially fascinating. I'm afraid I got in the way of one of our neighbors yesterday, as I thought it would be a nifty idea to stop right there to take pictures. She had a smile on her face, sort of, once I'd moved out of her way.

There are a couple of decent-sized patches of these, which I believe to be Madera Leptosiphon, Leptosiphon serrulatus.

And many thanks to the Calflora web site, one of the niftiest sites ever for "looking stuff up".

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Dino has been busy on a project that will provide water and power to the shop building as well as all of our garden areas and eventually will allow for setup of an automatic drip system. At the moment, we have any number of trenches into which various pipes and pieces of conduit will go.

I was able to offer a day's labor last weekend, which in spite of the fact that I'm in pretty good shape, had me whining about sore muscles. However, it is a truth that I would prefer trenching to having a day job, however much I am grateful for the income. My time for retirement is not yet, alas.

This post's photographic offering is an image of Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides, a member of the lily family also known as Golden Brodiaea. (Note: there is an Elegant Brodaea blooming on the grade I drive up to go to work. I may try to snap a photo of that before it fades.)

Friday, May 6, 2011

As some of you may know, I seem to have developed a fondness for observing fungi. Over the last couple of years, I have made it a mini-mission to photograph as many fungi as possible - at least those that we spy at our beloved Dryad Ranch. I created a little book of my treasured finds:

We are: Praying Horse (yours truly) and The Dinosaur (husband of the Horse).

We have a 128-acre ranch in a little valley in the Sierra foothills which we share with oaks, birds and horses. We were finally able to leave the Bay Area behind and move here full time in August 2009, oh blessed event! We are surrounded by wildlife of both the four-legged variety - coyotes, deer, bobcats, foxes, wild pigs, racoons, skunks - and of the feathered type.